


washing machine heart

by lazarov



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Early-S1, Eliot Waugh's canonical biphobia raises its unfortunate but inevitable head, M/M, Making Out, POV Quentin Coldwater, Power Dynamics, Quentin Coldwater knows how to orchestrate a makeout session, but he doesn't know how to keep it from getting weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29121588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: “You’re trying to do that thing to me.”“What thing?”“That thing where you say you’re a bad kisser so that I want to find out—or so that I do find out. It’s like when college girls say they have nipple rings.”“I don’t know,” said Quentin—notno,and also notI don’t know what you’re talking about.He lolled his head back again, looking at the ceiling so that he didn’t have to see the expression on Eliot’s face as he asked, “Do you?”“Do I what—want to find out?”Or: A handful of weeks into Quentin's first semester at Brakebills, a bit of frantic, power-play making out was inevitable.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 14
Kudos: 140





	washing machine heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubick/gifts).



> [Rubi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubick/pseuds/Rubick) wanted a fic where Q does that thing where you say you're a bad kisser to make someone want to find out; here is that fic (with a little extra angst thrown in, because of who I am as a person).
> 
> A million thanks to river for beta-ing my chronic run-on sentences.
> 
> Song title from **Washing Machine Heart by Mitski** :
> 
> _Baby will you kiss me already and_   
>  _Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart_   
>  _Baby, bang it up inside_

* * *

It was after midnight and they were out of whiskey, but it wasn’t a complete emergency. 

One of the secret joys of the Cottage was that every fifth cabinet or drawer held a half-finished bottle of decent booze squirrelled away for safekeeping and just as soon forgotten about. Drunken nights often turned into easter egg hunts—if you were lucky, creaking open a cupboard full of wood samples (properly meant for spellwork, but more often used as kindling to get a ripping bonfire going in the backyard) might turn up an 18-year Talisker laying on its side like a sleeping soldier, half-buried underneath a mound of ebony chips by a stingy Brakebills student of yore. 

Theoretically, it made sense—out of all the specialties, Physical Kids were the most prolific drinkers; if you wanted something nicer than well bourbon to last in the Cottage, you needed a better hiding place than under your bed.

From across the room, kneeling in front of a linen chest that usually served as a makeshift seat for awkward First Years attending their inaugural Cottage party (where they could observe the action without being called on to contribute to any of the actual fun), Eliot whisper-shouted, “Limoncello. And green chartreuse.”

“I’ve got—” Quentin squinted at the label, rolling the curvy dark bottle around in his hands, “I think it’s amaro?”

“Fuck it.” Eliot slammed the chest closed with a whoosh that sent tiny motes of dust scattering through the air. They glittered in the firelight. “That’ll do.”

* * *

“This stuff is terrible.” 

Quentin poured himself another glass. He wasn’t sure what a reasonable measure of amaro was, so he erred on the side of ‘a lot.’ Eliot was draped across the mid-century sofa facing the fireplace, while Quentin was stuck sitting on the floor, his spine braced against the hard, threadbare base—the Jack to Eliot’s Rose, except that Quentin didn’t cast himself off the couch out of gentlemanly self-sacrifice but instead because Eliot simply hadn’t made room for him. It would have felt diminishing, except Quentin also had the amaro tucked safely in the space between his criss-crossed legs. Maintaining his possession over it was the great equalizer.

Behind his head, Eliot tsked. 

“Watch your mouth. Beggars can’t be choosers—you’re gonna put the booze _malocchio_ on us. For that bad juju,” out of the corner of his eye, a drunken hand waved in Quentin’s general direction, “we’ll be cursed to dig up nothing but _crème de menthe_ for the next month.”

The liquor was syrupy and oxidized to high hell. He was already decently drunk before he’d found it and he might have assumed all the alcohol had burned off by now—God knows how long it was Fortunato’d away in that little drawer—if not for the pleasant weighty feeling that had begun, with every heartbeat, to shoot out from his chest cavity into the ends of his limbs, making them feel heavy and loose like he was suspended underwater. The radiating, curiously exciting heat of Eliot’s body—not _from_ his body, technically, but from the knowledge that it was _right there,_ splayed loose-limbed behind him on the couch and near enough that his wrist or knee occasionally knocked against Quentin’s shoulderblade—made Quentin feel even drunker. He would soberly investigate the intensity of his crush in the morning; for now, he was content to schedule a quick and furious jerk-off session before bed, choreographed to the thought of Eliot’s long fingers wrapped bruisingly around his throat.

“Tell me a secret,” said Eliot—he said it like, _pour me another glass._ An easy instruction.

“What?”

“I like secrets,” Eliot sighed, as if it was an explanation, swirling his amaro. Tilting his head back so that it barely brushed against Eliot’s thigh, Quentin watched as his glass caught the dim light of the mismatched lamps strewn around the sitting room, and the flicker of the fire, refracting the light back onto Eliot’s face and making it glow.

“What do you want to know?”

“That’s boring—if I have to go fishing for one, that’s—well, that’s boring. Don’t be boring.” It was Eliot’s ace in the hole. He knew his power over Quentin; that he would do whatever it took to keep Eliot entertained and therefore close. In another context, the casual, indelicate shotgun-spray cruelty of it might have been enough to make Quentin stand up and neck his drink and announce that he was going to bed, too, because he was _boring_ and _boring people go to bed before two in the morning_ , but—in this context, alone together and stupid-drunk—

“Ha,” said Quentin flatly. He tried to think of something.

The real secret was that as soon as Alice slammed her glass down and announced that she was so tired she was going to _pass the fuck out where she stood_ if she didn’t go to bed immediately, then disappeared upstairs without another look behind her, and then Margo had muttered, “Hear hear,” and waved at them before climbing the stairs—and before they’d even been alone for a full three seconds—Quentin knew that he was going to taste the inside of Eliot’s mouth before the night was through.

Instead, he said: “I cheated on Sunderland’s midterm.” 

That wasn’t technically true; he’d gotten stumped on a question about the procedure for reinforcing the strength of a solid-core wooden door and, looking up to clear his head, caught Alice miming Cortez’s Turnkey to herself. She had a habit of gesturing in space, the way some people mouth the words to themselves as they read. That pinged his memory that, oh right, the last movement was _that_ and not fucking Popper Seven. It was hardly cheating, now that he thought about it, but the exaggeration was a convenient opportunity to make another attempt to undermine Eliot’s probable impression of him as a try-hard, rules-loving mega-nerd. 

(Eliot would never think of him as cool, but Quentin tried to finesse his reputation away from mega-nerd status wherever he could.)

“Juicy.” Eliot’s tone was indecipherable.

Bravely, Quentin let his head drop back to rest against Eliot's thigh. “Your turn.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Eliot, his eyes briefly flicking down to the spot where Quentin was touching him, then back to Quentin's eyes. “Give me another one.”

Fine—Quentin was not a dancing monkey. If Eliot wanted to play games, they could play games. 

“I’m a bad kisser.” 

“Shut up, Coldwater.” Eliot snorted into his glass, before finishing the dregs. The sight of his throat—and of his collarbones, peeking out of his rucked-open collar below it—was unbearable. Quentin tore his eyes away and shrugged; he let himself lean against Eliot for a second longer before he lifted his head again to take another sip, fingers drumming against his glass. He wished there was music playing—something more than just the crackle of the fire, so that he didn’t feel so compelled to fill the silence. Then, unprompted, Eliot added languidly, like he was testing the idea out even as he said it out loud: “You’re trying to do that thing to me.”

“What thing?” 

“That thing where you say you’re a bad kisser so that I want to find out—or so that I do find out. It’s like when college girls say they have nipple rings.” 

“I don’t know,” said Quentin—not _no,_ and also not _I don’t know what you’re talking about._ He lolled his head back again, looking at the ceiling so that he didn’t have to see the expression on Eliot’s face as he asked, “Do you?”

“Do I what—want to find out?” 

For a long stretch, Eliot didn’t respond, and Quentin thought— _oh, this is how I fuck this already-precarious friendship up,_ as though it was a relief to finally have the _how_ and the _when_ of it confirmed to him—but then Eliot set his glass down and shifted on the couch and his fingers brushed the back of Quentin’s neck, his other hand reaching under his jaw to draw it up, so that he could lean down to capture Quentin’s open and waiting mouth with his own.

Immediately, Quentin arched into the kiss, his feet finding purchase against the rug to leverage himself upward, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck—pulling him closer, harder, knocking their teeth together with the drunken ferocity of his desperation to fill his hands and his mouth with him while he had the chance. His tongue darted between Eliot’s lips, eliciting a delicious moan, the rumble of it thrumming under Quentin’s fingertips and tickling his mouth. They scrabbled at each other, fighting for dominance, Eliot hauling him upward with a fist twisted in the front of his shirt as Quentin dragged him down—equal parts passionate and childish and furious. 

There was no sound except for the crackle of the fireplace and their panting breaths; the burning friction of Eliot’s stubble combined with the perfect slip of his tongue felt illegal. It made Quentin’s brain swim, intoxicated and feral—finally, _fucking finally_. His glass toppled over with a hollow thud and it didn't occur to him to care.

He started to twist under Eliot’s grip, trying to shift from his levered-backward position so that he could get onto his knees and climb up, _up,_ to properly take hold of Eliot’s face and shove him back onto the sofa, to interlock their drunken, clumsy legs and lean into Eliot’s tilted hips until he bucked up to grind against Quentin’s hipbone—until Eliot cried uncle and admitted that Quentin wasn’t boring at all, but—

The hand in Quentin’s hair tightened into a fist, hard enough to make tears prick at the corners of Quentin’s eyes. Eliot pulled away, leaving Quentin panting and blinking at the ceiling, mouth open and begging— _empty-feeling_ , like it had something stolen away from it; he ran his tongue along his lips, unselfconsciously gathering up what was left of Eliot's taste. 

Eliot peered down at him for a long moment, his own mouth swollen-looking. His eyes narrowed.

“You’re _not_ a bad kisser.” He released his stinging grip and fell back against the cushions, brushing his own hair back from his sweat-sticky forehead. “Maybe a manipulative one, but that’s okay—I’ve been a willing mark for plenty of straight boys’ drunken experiments.” 

Quentin started to protest—to clarify that no, that isn’t what this was on _so many, or probably all fucking counts_ , but Eliot reached out again with a lazy hand to tangle it, gently, in the hair at the nape of Quentin’s neck. “You’re drunk,” he said, his tone of voice as disarmingly gentle as his touch. “You should go to bed.”

“I’m not—” Quentin murmured, frowning at him. He tried to move toward Eliot, to retake what he had suddenly decided was his rightful spot claiming every last one of Eliot’s ragged breaths, but Eliot shook his head with a regretful half-smile and let go of his hair to press a halting hand to his shoulder.

“Q.” The finality of his tone was a neon red stop-sign. “That was. Well, you know what that was—good. Nice.” A pause. “A lot.” Fair, thought Quentin. Eliot closed his eyes as he measured his words, holding up a finger to keep him from interrupting. “I do not have the emotional or physical capacity to debrief this right now. How about—how about you hold that thought Roadrunner-ing around your brain and, instead, you wait for the brutal light of day to let me know what you are or aren’t.” His eyes flashed open, drilling into Quentin’s. “Deal?”

Quentin nodded. His mouth was abruptly dry, and he stumbled over his words as he confirmed, “Okay. Brutal light of day.”

“Cool, good. Great. Good.” Eliot nodded back, chewing on his bottom lip. “Excellent.” He swung his feet off of the sofa and stepped over Quentin’s outstretched legs, putting on a good show of walking steadily toward the staircase without a backward glance—although Quentin could see, even in the dying firelight, the way his knuckles went white and his forearms flexed as he gripped the bannister for dear life, as if trying to keep steady on a keeling boat. It was even harder to miss the tinge of trembling urgency in his voice as he paused on the third stair and added, “Night, Q. You, ah—you know where to find me.” 

* * *


End file.
